With the holiday season in full swing, it’s easy to forget about the importance of privacy and security in this world of endless digital devices. More and more of our electronics are constantly connected to the Internet through cloud services, providing more and more entry points into our homes for those with nefarious intentions. McAfee reached out to me with some tips on staying secure when using different devices, and they’re good enough to be shared, as they just might help you avoid a privacy-related disaster. Additionally, McAfee is running a sweepstakes where the grand prize winner will receive a trip for two to Iceland. More details on that at the end of this article.

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Is the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 the best Android phone you can buy right now? This is certainly a controversial topic, what with the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 exploding battery issue that has spawned a recall of the device. Still, the Note 7 features a bunch of great technology, like the built-in iris scanner and dual pixel camera. Check out my Galaxy Note 7 review to find out what I think of Samsung's latest flagship phablet!

This is the time of year where many are looking to score a new TV hopefully at a great price. This year, we have a few new acronyms that people need to take into consideration when making a purchase: 4K, HDR, and WCG. If you’re familiar, then you know I’m talking about Ultra HD, High Dynamic Range, and Wide Color Gamut. All three represent a very positive shift in the TV viewing experience, and if you want all three you can end up spending a pretty penny. However, if you are just looking for a nice display with a fantastic feature that supports all the latest standards, then the 2016 Vizio M-Series should be on your list.

Apple’s new MacBook Pro comes with an eye-catching feature, a Touch Bar across the top of the keyboard that replaces the function keys with virtual buttons and sliders that change in context, depending on which program or app you’re using at any given moment.

But starting at $1799 for a 13-inch model with Touch Bar, this is no small investment. So is the new MacBook Pro really worth it? Andru Edwards of Gear Live & Todd Bishop of GeekWire have a new MacBook Pro in-studio for this special GeekWire podcast and video segment to give us their take.

If you're looking for the best Black Friday 2016 deals for tech and gaming, I looked all over to find the best tech deals for Black Friday 2016 and I bring them to you in this video! I narrowed it down to great tech products like 4K TVs, Google Home, Xbox One bundles, and more - and then I also break it down by stores, including Target, Amazon, eBay, Best Buy, and Walmart. Any deals that are available online are linked below!

For decades, Western Digital has been recognized as one of the very few leaders in the world of storage and hard drives. If you open up that pre-built computer you bought, there's a good chance that on the inside you'll find a Western Digital-branded drive. If you're building your own, you likely purchased (or at least considered) going with Western Digital for your internal storage solution.

Where this might now have been the case is if you wanted to be a part of the growing trend of users switching to solid state drives. SSDs allow for faster speeds, both in read and write times, as well as the benefit of having no moving parts. They are faster, quieter, and more durable. When they were first released, they were prohibitively expensive, but as time has gone on, prices have dropped substantially as they do with any new form of technology.

The problem that Western Digital had was that it's class-leading hard disk drive prowess didn't mean that it was prepared for the new age of SSDs, and it had nothing to offer customers who wanted to go this route. It's solution was to purchase SanDisk in March 2016, a company that excels at flash storage solutions, and 8 months later we have the first results in the Western Digital Blue SSD.

If you've been shopping for a laptop lately, you may have a vague idea that "ultrabook" means "lightweight" and "small" but otherwise you may be a little confused about why some laptops are called ultrabooks and others aren't. It's understandable – this is one of those areas where names sort of caught on and many different manufacturers started using it, often with different ideas about what it meant. Here are the major points that define an ultrabook, and more importantly the top ultrabooks, and why they matter if you are getting ready to buy a computer.

Buying a home projector sounds easy at first: You get a screen, you get a projector, you aim it at the screen – and presto, theater-like movie time! But reality quickly teaches us that home projectors are very cool, but also a little complicated. They don't follow the same rules as TV screens, and they have extra features to consider and choose between.

Sometimes, your smartphone camera just isn't enough for taking great photos and you need a legitimate point and shoot digital camera. It's okay to admit it – that little lens isn't always the best at detecting light, zooming in, or snapping clear pictures, no matter how good it may be at making selfies. If you need to take pictures that your smartphone just can't handle, you need a digital camera – but you probably don't want to pay too much for one.

Are Lightning headphones better than the tried and true 3.5mm jack headphone style? In this challenge, I put Lightning Headphones vs the 3.5mm headphone port to see which one sounds better. The challenge took place at YouTube Space LA as part of the YouTube NextUp event that I got to be a part of. What you see in the background is the haunted hotel stage. YouTube NextUp was an amazing experience, and I'll have a video showcasing it shortly. Back to the headphones though, Audeze currently makes the best Lightning headphones that I have found for the iPhone, but you can be sure that more will be coming from a bunch of different manufacturers.